it is not that hard if you just do that. i do not have preconceptions. i do not hate people. i do not hang out with federal reserve people. or the opposite. i just wander around through life to figure it out. >> are you a follower? >> important points. economists will tell you for the most part they agree on 98% of economics. i think that is correct. it is the 2% that they do not agree on where all the important policy decisions have to get made. i am not much -- for those who are not paying a lot of attention to economics, it means i am something close to the monetarist view,

something closer to the austrian school. i am not all the way in that camp. >> what does it mean? what is the practical meaning? >> it has a strong practical meaning now. the stimulus program, was it a good idea? some will say yes. the other side would say it was not a good idea. it will not work. my view would be i do not think it was a good idea and allan and i disagree violently, that is the practical meaning of it in today's environment. >> how do you disagree?

>> i think we need to stimulate the economy. i do not think we need to do what we did. i would have, instead of subsidizing public employee jobs, my friends are public employees. that was a big part of the stimulus. i would have started also at this construction. i would have tried to finish this tunnel from new jersey into new york, which would be a huge value all over the region. i would have done it differently. again, since i do not have a degree in economics and do not want one, would not take it they gave it to me, i am just trying to apply common sense. common sense was needed to do something to shock the system. that is pragmatic economics. how i do not think we did the right thing. it was better than nothing. geoff probably disagrees.

>> we have a long article on our website. "america's leaders are not leading. the children would rather stamp their feet and hold their breath than solve momentous issues of economic policy. the games are childish and the resulting suffering is serious." pick it up from there. i named nine things you want to change after the election. >> that is right. we are in a situation where we are facing fiscal disaster. that is not an overdramatic. you can look at these charts. they are easy to find online. do a little search.

congressional budget office. treasury. we are facing fiscal disaster. the debt of the united states, the budget, on its current trajectory, will bankrupt the country if we do not do something. >> what is the worst that could happen? >> what almost happened last summer when the idiots, the republican idiots, decided we can have the country default on its debt and that would be fine. if you have ever been a banking reporter, which i have, if there is anything resembling a default on u.s. debt, it is a disaster worldwide. i thought we had learned something from that a year ago. apparently, we have not. the worst thing that happens is a u.s. default on its debt. it would be catastrophic. for no reason, idiotic.

it is crazy. >> what is the result? >> every bank in the united states, every major bank, is bankrupt. suddenly, your capital is gone. a lot of capital is tied up in government securities. >> what happens if i go to the bank and want my money? >> it might or may not still be there. it is not like the banks would close. they would not be able to lend. it was like four years ago where you were facing massive bank failures. you still get your money but you would not get a loan. your company might not be able to pay you. the soundest companies in the world could not borrow money. >> there is not enough money. >> of course not. we are talking trillions of dollars. i am not saying a united states

default is tomorrow. bank of america would end and j.p. morgan would close their doors and got out of business. but it is a serious hit into commerce, or what remains of commerce. it is crazy. >> the larger problem here is we need to make very substantial changes in the tax and budget regime we have. very serious changes that will hurt. so nobody wants to do it. the worst thing that happened is we do not do any of them until we have a crisis, a really horrible crisis, and defaulting on the debt would be pretty bad if it were allowed to happen for more than a day or two. a horrible crisis can happen in other ways. for example, and this is something we really have to pay

more attention to, the previous 10 leaders of the council of economic advisers -- maybe it was more -- from both parties, last year, jointly signed an open letter to congress and the administration saying, if we do not get this situation under control, one day, and no one knows when it will be, but for sure, one day, the bond market, all the people and institutions in the world to lend that money to the united states, will demand a higher interest rate. it will go up and up and up. when it does, what they said was, we will have a financial crisis that will make the 2008 financial crisis look small. that is the real danger. >> one quick thing. allan took a whack at the republicans. >> what you are willing to do,

no one really knows until the final moment. in this case, when it came to the final moment, the default was averted. i cannot blame either side. it is a negotiation. i blame them both. >> let's go to some solutions you have. you have proposed a number of changes that could occur after the election. we could restrict end-of-life care. how? >> that is just what you do. i will not tell you the specifics because i do not know them. i and geoff and many people watching this have seen what happens when people you love

get old and sick and end up in the hospital using vast amounts of money because hospitals are expensive, and it is the end of life and they will not make it and they will not have a life. an enormous amount of money is expended. it is huge. everybody knows it, but nobody will talk about it. >> it accounts for a huge proportion of total medicare spending. by the way, one reason is the first thing in our article is getting medicare costs under control is the number one priority. it is the most untouchable thing. but that will cause more trouble than any other problem we have got fiscally in the united states. getting medicare costs under control is the number one thing. >> you say we also surcharge smokers and the obese for their medicare coverage.

where did that idea come from? >> it came from us. i am the person who put it in the memo. i did not have to fight very hard for it. i ran into this in the washington post, where instead of calling people morbidly obese, i called them mega fatties. i was rebuked for being insensitive, which i guess i am. this is another thing where everyone knows it to be true and some has to pay for it. i am not saying you should bankrupt people if they are too heavy. but there should be penalties. i am not really a democrat, but a democrat compared to him. you have to be responsible to some extent for your personal behavior. someone has to pay for it. >> we should point out, also, that we are not the only ones making arguments like this. there have been other bipartisan commissions and so forth.

a democrat and republican also said that with regard to medicare, we need to do something about the obese and smokers. they also had a proposal, which was more complicated than ours, for restricting spending on end of life care. these are difficult decisions but we have to face them. >> if you weigh x pounds, medicare would cut it off? >> this is why the lord created experts. i am not an expert. i am skinnier than i was but i do not know. >> insurance companies are managed to handle this kind of thing. it is feasible. they will give you a medical exam before they sell you

certain kinds of insurance. they look at your rate, heart rate, blood sugar, and other things, and use it to set your rate. we can do this. it is feasible. >> you say social security should be a pay-as-you-go system, wiping out the deceptive social security trust fund. what is that? >> yes. anytime anybody mentions to you the social security trust fund, unless they are telling you it is meaningless, which it is, then they are probably leading you astray. >> why is it meaningless? >> because the social security trust fund reinvested in u.s. treasury securities. it means that, when the social security trustees go to the treasury to redeem one of their treasury bonds, they hand it to the treasury and say, we would like our money. the treasury gives them their money and goes out into the world to borrow it because otherwise, they do not have it. it is just more government

borrowing. >> what would you do about it? >> i would do what we proposed. i have angered any number of people by writing what we said. i would do what we propose in there. have the balance of the social security trust fund for the social security recipients. in 25 years, you would have a system that, it is a pay-as- you-go system. you have a trust fund that is a weird economic thing having to do with social security rolls. but it has no economic value and has led people astray.

>> right. let's get rid of it as a distraction. let's just call it what it is. >> let's see if we can get advice from both of you for people who are watching this election. what is absolutely going to happen after november 6, no matter who is elected, that will have to do with people's pocketbook and money? >> no matter what candidates. >> that is a very good question. i think what we can say with confidence is that the winner, whoever he may be, will have to do some stuff that will make him unpopular. the reason i say that is that we face this debt and deficit situation that is simply unsustainable and frankly, next year is the big window we have.

right after the election, the first-year, either romney's first year or obama, who will never run for reelection again, so people will not have to worry about it. this will be the window to cut the budget in some significant way, or at least have an outline for cutting the budget, and reform the tax system in some kind of significant way. the question is, will it be the big picture reforms we need or will it be a 12-month solution? but they will have to do something that will hurt. i hate to say that. >> hurt everybody? >> yes. the only reason i would hesitate is that probably at the

bottom of the income scale, he'd make sure they are not hurt. >> what would you say to someone watching the elections and listening to the candidates, and they all promise that if you elect me, everything will be fine? it happened four years ago. >> it happened eight years ago, 12 years ago, 14 years ago. everybody is not at the point to be fine. what i hope will happen is that we will have shared sacrifice. everyone will suck it up and grow up and enough already and we will cut all of these programs and cut their growth and we will increase the tax revenue to the government. and we will act like a civilized society with sharing the pain instead of this fantasy that i can have what i want, everybody else will pay for it.

>> let me knock down another one of your ideas. not knock it down, but bring it on the table. the largest element of spending after social security is defense. its budget can and should be cut. you are a conservative? >> yes. >> i think i have heard mr. romney talk about the fact that we will not. >> right. >> here is the reality that has to be faced. if you are running for office, it is one of those things i guess you cannot say. it still needs to be said. the defense budget is large, and it needs to come down. if you are not running for office, you can say all this stuff. a republican will be happy to tell you that it can and must be down. he points out that the u.s. defense budget is larger than the combined defense budget of the next 14 largest countries

and the world. what struck me this year was the house in may passed an appropriation bill for defense. were they looking to cut? no. it gave $3 billion to the pentagon more than what it asked for. the pentagon specifically wanted to cut back or reduce a drone program, a tank program, and a submarine program. the defense department said, we do not want these things. we do not need them. the house put them back. this is about, frankly, sending back to the district rather than addressing the country's fiscal needs. yes, the defense budget can be cut. frankly, the defense department knows that. >> the word sequester.

i have had people say, what does that mean? it is said it will be a disaster for our national security. >> i do not pretend to know. the cutbacks in social security and medicare, those were things i threw into the pot. geoff, he threw in the defense budget. i would not have thought of it because it is so untouchable. what will happen? i do not know. but, i think we have to be spending too much money given what the rest of the world spends. >> what do you think of the elected officials in this

country, from your position? >> i think some of them are wonderful. a lot of them are trying to do the right thing, which they could. i think a lot of them feel trapped by the forces that work in the society that force them to disdain compromise, to treat politics as warfare, which it did not used to be. i think most of them, not all, but most of them, in their heart of hearts, would be willing and happy to compromise. but they do not feel they can if they want to be reelected. >> i agree with him. >> everything he said? >> this time.

>> one side better than the other? >> that is not the question. the question is, is one side worse? >> are they different? >> yes. you could argue either way. i am not here to talk about the problems. it is not what i want to talk about. i am not into politics. i will just write with geoff. otherwise, i would get in serious trouble. >> let me go back to the list. "fortune magazine," it said this. our tax code is dragging the nation down. "broaden the base and lower the rates." >> the great thing about this is that this is, as a general principle, a dead center, middle of the road idea. this is something both sides in principle can agree on and they

will fight over the details. we had the simpson-bowles commission. the chairman jointly said exactly this. broaden the base, lower the rates. bipartisan, this was said again. in those words. >> get to the details. what does it mean? >> very simple. we get rid of all kinds of deductions, exemptions, credits, special breaks in the tax code today. we get rid of a lot of them. by doing so, we lower the tax rates that are applied to everybody else. >> the reality is if we have what i half expect to happen, which is a big crisis that scares everybody, including the zealots on both sides, and the real zealotry is coming from

the republican party. the democrats are not pariahs. we need to grow up and do this. we want to say, what should happen and these are things that everybody knows who has studied this seriously, but nobody wants to say. it should happen. >> how bad a crisis will it take before the leaders in washington can agree on a big compromise? >> people have been predicting in your line of work around the world that there will be a catastrophe. serious people say we are headed toward a catastrophe. is that possible? >> of course. the question is, is it likely and what kind is it? i am 67 years old. i have worked my whole life. i have saved.

i have been thrifty. i have been a good boy. no matter what happens, i will survive. my wife and i will survive financially. >> no matter what happens? >> if a meteor comes. [laughter] i am not into apocalypse. i have studied religion. i am not into apocalypse. i do not know what will happen. i think just like four years ago where people got scared enough to do something, you can argue about whether we did the right thing, to save the system from collapse, we will save the system from collapse the next time, as well. the only way to fix the thing and not have these recurring problems is to do the things we are talking about.

>> the catastrophe is certainly possible. my own view is that it is unlikely. it is possible, but i think the probability is pretty low. the greater probability is that unemployment remains at a fairly high level kind of like it is today, that economic growth remains at a slow rate like it is today, that living standards do not rise. it is not a nice scenario. frankly, i think it could be improved on by some bold, big- picture action. >> i want to find out where you two are from and how you got to where you are. geoff colvin, where did you start in life?

>> i was born in south dakota. a wonderful place. i still say i was incredibly lucky to have grown up where and when i did. the family med a little bit but we were always midwesterners. >> what did your parents do? >> it was interesting. my father owned a printing business in south dakota. in the middle of his career, he decided to change his career completely. he sold his business. he went back to school and got a ph.d. in clinical psychology. the second half of his career was on the factory of a medical school in illinois. my mother mostly worked at home until the kids were out of college, at which point she went to law school and the second half of her life was spent working as a lawyer. she practiced law. >> when did you leave south dakota? >> i moved away when i was 14 years old.

i finished high school in southern illinois. it is where my father was on the faculty. then i went off to college, went to harvard, majored in economics, and came down to new york. i worked briefly for the founder and chairman of ecs. i have been at "fortune" virtually my entire career. i have been doing short reports that are carried on. the cbs radio stations, they are wonderful. these are small reports. everything on news radio is short. but i do a couple of those every day. >> allan sloan? >> i am the polar opposite. i grew up in brooklyn, new york.

i went to brooklyn college. it was free. my father worked primarily for a nonprofit organization. my mom worked before they were married. she did business out of her home, our home, when the kids were there. that is when i learned how to count. i helped her. it was heavy clerical stuff. i got to the point where i did everything in my head because it was faster. there were no calculators. that has been a great help to be journalistically. i do numbers in my head. it is my secret weapon. >> how many years were you at "newsweek"? >> four years. i was in detroit for seven years.

all my children have michigan birth certificates. i have ended up here and there. i ended up that "newsweek" and i thought i would be there forever. that did not quite worked out. five years ago, i went to "fortune magazine." i am the opposite of geoff. it is really fun. >> let's go back to the article. when did you first start talking to one another about this? how long? >> it was not long ago. some day in august. >> the last thursday in july. i was going away for the month of august on vacation. thursday, our boss comes to me and says, you and geoff will do this. on friday, we had lunch and started working on it.

>> has there been any strong reaction, and if so, what is it? >> we have had a tremendous amount of reaction. i cannot recall getting a reaction anything like this one in many years. we heard from a huge number of readers, most of whom were very, they said, thank heaven, the spd said. some of them did not like the proposal. we heard from them, too. we have heard from lots of readers. >> where did you have this picture taken? [laughter] >> it is crossing avenue of the americas at 51st street. >> you have straw hats on. one has a suit and tie. you are dressed in your khakis. does that say something? >> the first thing it says is that i had no idea they were

going to take my picture because i was at the beach when this request comes to have the picture taken. i said to take me to my house to get a suit. they said, we do not think we want you to wear a suit. i was trapped. my wife, who is a rational, normal person, was mildly annoyed. but the only choice was that shirt. it was the best thing i had at the beach. >> one person reacts strongly, your wife. >> it is a nice picture. my outfit, you see i am not wearing that to church today. >> let me go back to this article before we run out of time. this is the one i labeled the sixth suggestion.

"the exclusion for the employer-sponsored health insurance." >> exactly right. it is the weirdest tax expenditure in the whole tax code. it makes no sense. it is a hugely valuable benefit that everybody who gets health insurance at work receives. but unlike the other things to get at work, like a salary, it is not taxed. >> $177 billion last year? >> that is how much it costs the treasury in lost tax revenue because of that provision in the tax code. it is very unfair. it means a health care benefit, medical insurance, costs much more for people who do not have a job and have to buy it on their own than it costs for people who do have a job.

>> this is one that when he put it on the table, i gulped. as part of an overall deal, i could accept it. when mccain was suggesting this years ago, i criticized it. it is part of an overall package, which i can accept. >> the next one, though. >> you are right. the next one is probably the hardest of them all. >> "the tax deduction for mortgage owners." >> if i were in charge, i might not want to do that. as part of an overall package, i think you have to. i live in a very high-cost place, very high tax, housing prices are enormous, interest bills on mortgages are huge. a lot of money for a lot of friends of mine.

this is not abstract. nobly, i would say i do not want this. but again, it is part of a package. >> that is critical. it is not immediately clear to a given person whether his tax would go up or down under this. in any case, it just, as a matter of logic, it makes no sense. >> how long have you felt that way? >> for many years. you realize there is no logical reason for that to be a tax deduction. in other countries, such as canada, they do not have a tax deduction. canada did not have a housing bubble. >> did you consider this business of changes in the

state, the affordable care act, as this would drop insurance? >> again, i have a daughter who is a doctor. i know more about the health insurance business than i want to know and the finances of it for reasons of we will not go into. i had real problems with the obama thing. i thought it could have been done much simpler. i do not understand the workings of the affordable care act. i do not understand them. i do not think anybody does. i do not know enough about it to have an informed opinion. rather than say something stupid, i will say nothing. >> it is all the more reason to end this tax break to get their insurance through work. it is pretty certain that fewer

people will get their insurance through work. they will have to buy it on their own. there is stuff in the affordable care act to help those who have to buy it on their own and cannot afford it easily. let's make it across the board. >> but back to the mortgage. i can hear it. we are in new york. i can hear the lobbyists of all those different companies that benefit. they are yelling. they are powerful. >> there are already limits on how much you can deduct. i do not know if this made it into the "washington post" version, but we said it should be phased out over time in the "fortune magazine" version. i know when i first bought houses, i calculated the deduction to figure out how much i could afford as a

payment. you cannot just change the rules and hang people up because you cause them trouble and they will never get out of their houses financially alive. if you face this and do it over time, it can be made to work. there are already restrictions on how much interest you can deduct. >> you say here it should be done over time. >> it is the only way that is fair to do it. >> we have a couple to go. was there any one of these you got the most reaction about? health insurance, mortgage, social security? >> i cannot say there was anyone we got most reaction to. i think the ones you've touched are the hottest buttons, for sure. medicare is the hottest button. the mortgage interest, yes. later on, we say we should

eliminate the deduction for charitable contributions. >> tax deductions for state and local taxes on charitable gifts. explain what that is. >> if you make out a check to your church or school you went to, it is a deduction. you write a check to a religious organization or any sort of nonprofit. >> all of those churches and universities will no longer be? >> stop looking at me like that. [laughter] that is the only itemized deductor that i get the benefit of anymore. that's the only clear deduction i have. again, as part of an overall

thing, i would be willing to throw that in. my father worked for nonprofits. if he was still alive, he would kill me for even suggesting this. but there are real problems in this country. we need to think about them differently than we have thought. this is not something i like, but i hope it is accepted, just like on health care. one of the things we proposed you forgot to mention was eliminating the special treatment that investments get relative to income from work. that is something geoff had to swallow. you start out rationally. >> capital gains? >> yes, and dividends. >> it is a sentence or something in the article. >> tie that into the fiscal cliff? do you like that term? >> a perfectly good term, in my opinion.

it makes it sound dramatic, and that is good because it is. >> the capital gains would go from 15% up to 20%, if the bush tax cuts were allowed to expire. >> that is exactly right. >> based on watching washington, what will happen? >> what i think will happen is a short-term solution will be adopted. it will solve the problem so the cliff does not happen. if there is still anybody who doesn't know what the cliff mean, it means taxes will go up on the fourth of january and a whole lot of government spending will be required to come down. the combination of higher taxes and lower government spending, a lot of people believe would tip the country back. >> do you think it is a good idea to increase taxes? >> no, i do not. as you would expect. i think the cliff will be averted, but in an

unsatisfactory, short-term way that does not help businesses. that is a large part of our financial -- >> you have listened to president obama offering a campaign that rich people have to pay more. if he is reelected, what will happen? one side or the other will have to cave. >> i suspect taxes will go up on upper income people. this definition of which includes me, which sends me into laughter. i am not sure what rich means. he is. i think taxes i pay should rise but they should be more rational. i now pay a 15% on capital gains, but 22.5% on income because of the crazy workings. my accountant gleefully informed me of something that

was written wrong. he told me i am in the phase- out brackets of the alternative minimum tax. if i can only get $150,000 income. i have written about the stuff forever. i do not understand my own taxes. i have to have an accountant. i cannot understand the return. it is completely crazy. 20% of capital gains will not kill anybody. i treat capital gains and dividends the same way i treat income from work. i would lower the rate on everything by broadening the base. >> what do you think will happen, and is the country better off when everybody is elected from the same party, or

are we better off having it divided? >> that is a good question. in the current situation, we are better off with divided government. the reason i say that is that when you get legislation that passes only because one party controls everything, it is not stable. the great example in this is the affordable care act. obamacare, as some call it, was enacted without a single republican vote. democrats controlled both houses of congress. the problem with that is business people who have to make plans look at that and say, if it only passed because the democrats had total control, then if after the election the republicans have control, they have promised to repeal it. this is the largest ever regulation of the largest

sector of the largest economy on the planet. this idea that it will either stand as the law of the land or disappear completely is paralyzing for businesses. it is so much better if we can have divided government and have them agree on something. which they may finally be forced to do. >> did you have trouble getting your editors at "fortune magazine" to except this article? >> no. no objections at all. i was surprised. basically, the boss trusts us and has some idea of what we're doing. if you think of our conversation we have had today, there is something in there to annoy everybody. that was the whole point. >> a last point i want to ask you about is number 9 on my

list. "the biggest corporate tax expenditure by far is the deferral of tax on income earned by multi-nationals abroad." explain. how does it work? >> the way it works, to the extent i understand it, is if you are general electric, you can make money in germany, you do not pay u.s. taxes on those german profits until you bring the money back to the in united states. it sounds rational and ok. what has happened is things are so complicated now that companies invent -- big, multi- national companies invent subsidiaries in all the parts of the world, and apple does this and google does it and cisco. they invent the subsidiaries

where the profits are supposedly made in some tax haven where the company has nothing but a law firm and you do not pay tax. this is the only thing we could not reconcile. i think if you adopt the idea that you continue to defer taxes overseas, that no american company will ever report earning a penny in the united states because they will set up all this crazy stuff. >> the further problem is if they would pay u.s. taxes, if the money were brought in the united states, and the tax rate is the highest in the world, then they do not bring the money back into the united states. they are constantly being accused of doing all of their investment and hiring and so forth in other countries. part of the reason is they are hugely disincentivized to bring

the money back. we agree the current system is nutty. we have differing views, which gets to be technical. >> i know this was not meant to be a political article. let me ask you this as a guide to people who are trying to figure out who to vote for. will it make a difference? what will that difference be if you elect mitt romney or barack obama? >> what is a definite difference? in relation to this conversation? >> i will not go there. i need to live. also tell me who will be in the senate and who will be in the house. you will tell me all of these things. >> when we discuss this election, no one ever factors in the house. they only talk about the

president. >> i do not. i am working on something about how little power the president has compared to what people think he has. it is really not a question of who wins. it is a question of whether people grow up. maybe they will because they know they need to and parties will restrain the zealous and grow up and act like grown-ups. it has nothing to do with wins and loses. voters will elect these guys. the people who are going to do this. the voters do not do it. the people do it. >> are the people saying to these elected officials, this is what we want you to do? >> there is a large element of that, i fear. we want definitely some of the voters to grow up.

and realize that someone who was willing to go to washington and compromise is actually what we need. when you ask what will be different depending on who wins, one thing we can say for sure is if the republicans sweep, which seems highly unlikely at this point, but if they sweep white house, senate, house, obamacare would be repealed. mitt romney and the leaders of both houses on the republican side have pledged that they would do that. if the republicans sweep, they would have a vote. presumably, that would happen. beyond that, all we can say with regard to the presidential election is what would change is what is proposed by the president to the senate. that certainly shifts the direction of the debate. what can actually get enacted, assuming we have divided

government, which i do believe is the likeliest outcome, i would not even venture to guess. >> i think even if what you say happens, unless the republicans have 60 votes in the senate -- if they do not, the democrats -- you will not repeal obamacare. it will not happen. you will have gridlock in the other direction. because now, it is no longer, the other people will have the majority and we need to respect them. it is, what can we get in export? the whole system is nuts. >> let me ask you about a tax cut that does not get discussed much. there is a 4.8% tax, an additional 0.9% on your medicare tax. when does that, if you combine

it, it is almost 5% increase without reversing of the bush tax cut. >> it is a substantial tax increase. >> for people like us with substantial incomes. >> i am the tax cut. the part of that i would endorse is the increase in the medicare tax. it is unpleasant and it is unpalatable. that is step one. >> what will the average person pay for their medicare tax a month, for how long, and when to get the 0.9% added? >> it is a good question. >> is it added after $125,000? >> i think it is added after

$200,000, or $250,000. i am not sure. right now, the medicare tax is 1.45% on all of your salary income. it would go to 2.35%. >> both sides talk about the $750 billion savings. [laughter] who is right? >> we had both become incredibly frustrated. it has to do with the way this is talked about in washington. it has nothing to do with what real people talk about with real money in their lives. the current projection is medicare spending would increase by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years. so the obama plan said they

would bring to that figure, they would bring the growth down by $700 billion. only in washington is that called a cut. the amount spent would still be more than is being spent today. but it would not be as much more as previously forecast. >> there is also no guarantee the cut would actually happen. it is just a projection. so we are having an argument -- the obama people, to make the affordable care act look better, saying, here is all this money. it is not that they are proposing to cut medicare. they are saying the things we have done cut it. who knows? >> we will spend less than we believed we would have spent otherwise. but it will still be more than we are spending today. this is why you cannot talk about this issue. people's eyes glaze over. understandably so.

the graphic in the "washington post" shows the elephant and donkey back-to-back in the ring. >> in diapers in the sandbox. >> being little kids. >> what item did not go in your article because you did not agree on it? >> that is a good question. >> nothing. >> we said we could not agree on tax reform. i think that was it. we tried to get more detail, then who knows. we do not have a staff and we did not have 500 pages. we did not get very detailed. >> allan sloan, if you were running for office, would you say all this? >> yes. it is one of the reasons i would never. >> you would lose. >> i will not say something in public -- >> what is this saying about -- you have both alluded to the fact that it has to be said.

what does it say about our system? >> people on both sides pander and are not telling people the truth because they think people are not ready for the truth. they tell people the truth, they will not win. >> it is a problem in the culture. fundamentally, that is what it is. you cannot fix this with a lie. it is a problem with the culture that compromise is now a synonym for treason. >> you close this article by writing, "as the economy cries out for help, for adult supervision, at last, just maybe the moment has arrived." what chance on a percentage basis is there that the moment has arrived? >> the chance that we will get a big, long-term reform, big picture reform, in the next congress in the next two years, 20%.

>> what is the right way to pronounce your last name? >> colvin. >> geoff has thought about this more than i have. i would take his number. >> thank you very much. people can find your article. "fortune magazine." early september. thank you for joining us. >> for a dvd copy of this program call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give

us your comments about this program, visit us at www.q-and- a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> i get into trouble a couple of years ago making a speech in canada. i was talking about journalism. journalism --'t citizen in journalism. you need to work within a certain discipline. many of these others give up the real thing a bad name. >> next sunday, on his career

and the state of journalism today. at 8:00 on c-span. >> see the first of the presidential debates on wednesday live to watch and engaged. next, your comments on "washington journal." ton, a citizen's guide watching the presidential debates. live at 7:00 p.m., a debate in the massachusetts senate race. >> every generation throughout our history has worked and sacrificed to leave a better country for our children and grandchildren. we were spending their money. we are now even much more spending their money. we are leaving them a vast, a very difficult problem to deal

with if we are that week, just think of who will come and take a sober. the last thing i ever want to say -- last thing i ever want to see is that we will see our country taken over because we are too weak financially. we are in that direction. we've got to start fixing it now. otherwise, a disaster for our children and grandchildren. >> ross perot, interviewed on the economy, deficit, and that, and how it is changed since he ran for president. ross perot, tonight on the c- span at 9:00 eastern. >> this morning, wall street journal correspondent -- the wall street journal correspondent will preview correspondent will preview cases